One day last week, The Builder was gazing idly out the lounge room window, watching the wind and the rain. Along came a garbage truck, picking up, emptying and putting back down the wheelie bins of the street. It picked up ours, emptied it – and then ate it up. Every last scrap. No more wheelie bin for us :-(

He rang me to tell me of this amazing sight. We don’t generate a huge lot of rubbish, but there is some. And a bin is handy for keeping the local rats, cats, dogs and foxes from strewing rubbish all over the drive. I rang the council. The woman who answered the phone laughed! But then a bit later someone else rang up and said that the munching of our bin had been reported by the bin crew and a new bin was on its way.

And lo – a brand spanking, sparkling bin has duly arrived. I shall have to think of something to decorate it with. The last one had fairies but I don’t feel the need to replace them!

Other than that, it’s been fairly quiet. We came into Sheffield on Saturday evening to have dinner with our pals Sue and Roger. Haven’t seen them since The Builder’s birthday cake party last April – though I’ve seen Sue once or twice and we communicate occasionally by email. That was nice. We’ve done a bit or preparation for spring on the allotment, though not as much as we had hoped because it’s been raining on and off for days. We didn’t go out for lunch on Sunday because we neither of us have much spare cash, and The Builder isn’t working at the moment. We did have hopes of a long term job starting this week, but that seems to have vanished into the ether. So we stayed at home and had home cooked roast beef and Yorkshire puddings instead. I don’t get paid until tomorrow week, so I expect this coming weekend will be just as quiet.

I’ve done something horrible to my shoulder. It hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts. This means that my elbow and wrist are also hurting. Plus I am inclined to scrunch my shoulder up when it hurts which only makes it worse – and makes the other shoulder hurt too :-( I suspect that constant keyboarding isn’t helping. And I know for a certain fact that going down to the stack, collecting around 30 theses, putting them in a box and then carrying them (via the lift) to Level 4 then individually checking them out and putting them back in the box – well that didn’t help at all, at all. The lavender heat pack that Lindsey bought for Ian’s back and left behind at The Sidings is helping, however. It’s a pity that it’s at The Sidings and I’m at work.

I’m moving offices next week. I’m moving down to the D&S team office on Level 2. Most of my stuff has moved down already. I’ve even bought my new desk a parlour palm in a purple bowl. From Thursday I’ll be at a new extension. I’ll let you know what it is when I get it.

We need to go to Bristol. The zoo there is reporting the birth of the first baby aye aye in the UK. There have been several aye ayes born at the Durrell zoo, but Jersey is, it seems, not in the UK but is a Crown Protectorate instead. I suppose Bristol will be easier to get to than Jersey. But I shall wait until the baby aye aye has been put out for admiration